Topic: Google IO

Google appears to have a formidable lead in developing "smart services," including intelligent search, voice assistance, map routing, imaging and other app features powered by artificial intelligence. Yet at its annual Google IO developer conference, the company failed to show developers how this edge would do much for them, given that most Android devices aren't updated and that Google's own updated, premium-priced Android devices aren't selling.

ARCore 1.2, Google's updated augmented reality framework, includes a new cross-platform feature called 'Cloud Anchors,' which can allow both iOS and Android device users to share the same AR experience despite using different underlying AR technologies.

Google launched a new machine learning SDK called ML Kit, which provides a way for developers to add machine learning-based features to their Android and iOS apps, with Google's new framework following almost a year after Apple introduced the similar Core ML platform.

Google has previewed some of the changes it will be making to the Google Assistant app for iOS at the Google I/O keynote address, including food delivery and smart home-related requests, and an experimental feature where the digital assistant makes calls to businesses on the user's behalf.

"Great artists steal" in the sense of recognizing good existing ideas and building upon them. Now that Google has laid out its hand at IO17, detailing its plans for Android O and the search giant's various apps and services, what great ideas can Apple borrow for its own products? Here's a look.

Google has unveiled new versions of Android at its annual I/O developer convention with features often inspired by the previous year's iOS. The main difference: Apple can launch a new version of iOS and broadly distribute it before Google can deploy its copy of last year's iOS across even a third of its installed base. This problem is getting worse each year for Google and its Android partners.

Google is doubling down on increasing Android's market share in emerging markets with the creation of 'Android Go,' a version of Android O optimized for lower-specification entry-level Android devices and the bandwidth constraints of local infrastructure where those devices are sold.

Major features of Google's next iteration of Android have been revealed at the I/O developer conference, with "Android O" gaining a Picture-in-Picture mode, notification dots on app icons, and the ability to autofill data within apps, shown alongside improvements to the security and speed of the mobile operating system.

Rather than focusing on the incremental innovation needed to win back the attention of enterprise users and premium consumers, Google's vision for Android this year has again leapt in new directions which appear even less attainable. Android's scattered, imitative strategies du jour are resulting in a platform that looks a lot like Apple's--albeit the very unsuccessful Apple of the mid 90s.

Google's Android installed base has long suffered a major problem with fragmentation at the OS API level, due to the fact that licensees continue shipping low end phones paired with old versions of Android. Here's what the company is ostensibly doing to address that in a new project introduced at its I/O 2016 conference: Instant Apps.

Over the last year, the pace of Google's Android deployment, already very slow, actually rolled backward by 20 percent over the previous year. Google is leading Android and Chrome toward stagnant beleaguerment.